Faces of Open Government: Laura Neuman
Laura Neuman explores how she’s leveraging the implementation of Right to Information laws to advance government accountability.
The Open Gov Guide
The Open Gov Guide is the go-to resource for open government reformers. The guide provides concrete recommendations for policy makers, civil society representatives, and more on how to apply open government principles to real-world challenges. Readers can also use the guide to learn more about how governments at the national and local level are putting these values into practice through OGP action plans and beyond.
Learn more about this policy area in the “Right to Information” chapter of the Open Gov Guide.
Challenge Commitments
As part of the Open Gov Challenge, the OGP Support Unit would like to recognize some of the most inspiring commitments made by participants to date. Read more about these exciting reforms on this topic below.
For a full list of Challenge commitments submitted by members, visit our Open Gov Challenge Commitment Tracker.
Evaluate Compliance with the Access to Information Law
As part of its Transparency and Corruption Prevention Strategy, the city of Lisbon (Portugal) committed to evaluating its city’s compliance and effective implementation of the access to information law. Through this evaluation, the city aims to identify areas for improvement in the process of managing citizen requests for information and proactively publishing information online.
Adopt the Access to Information Bill
Senegal does not yet have a law that would ensure access to information. At the time of writing, a bill to protect this right is in the validation stage. After the law’s validation, the government committed to conducting public outreach to support its adoption and creating an independent agency to implement its requirements.
All Commitments from OGP Members
Explore all right to information commitments from OGP members.
Visit OGP’s Data Dashboard to see commitments submitted through national and local action plans.
Filter the commitments according to three categories evaluated by the Independent Reporting Mechanism (IRM): ambition, completion, and early results.
- Ambition: Beginning with 2020 action plans, the IRM assesses ambition using an indicator called “Potential for Results.” This indicator is an early marker of a commitment’s potential to yield meaningful results, based on how the commitment is articulated in the action plan and the state of play in the respective policy area.
- Completion: For each commitment, OGP’s Independent Reporting Mechanism (IRM) evaluates the degree to which the activities outlined in the commitment were implemented.
- Early Results: Beginning with 2021 action plans, the IRM assesses commitment results using an indicator called “Early Results”. This indicator compares the state of transparency, citizen participation, and/or public accountability before the action plan with the state at the end of the action plan.
Right to Information Stories
Faces of Open Government: Sammy Obeng
In this month's Faces of Open Gov, Sammy Obeng sheds light on the collaborative work to implement Ghana's landmark Right to Information law and underscores the importance of open parliaments and the interconnectedness of the open government community in driving impactful reforms.
Reform Space to Watch: Strengthening Governance in Sri Lanka
This series was written in consultation with the Transparency International chapters in each country. The reforms described in this series build on priority areas identified in the 2022 Broken Links report, which was written with the support of the Global…
Two Years of AskGov: From Civic Tech Tool to Community Impact
“You have a constitutional right to access public information.” I and many others have heard this statement many times. But how does this right actually work in fragile democracies? Let's delve into the case of Georgia, where in 2022, the…
Faces of Open Government: Sarah Wesonga
Meet Sarah Wesonga, Program Officer for Transparency and Access to Information at ARTICLE 19 Eastern Africa.
Take the Challenge
The Open Gov Challenge is a call to action for all members of OGP to raise ambition in ten areas of open government to help strengthen our democracies.
Join hundreds of reformers around the world – in government and civil society – who are working to make their communities stronger, more open, participatory, inclusive, and accountable.